kitty black cat

There are a lot of fluffy black cats in my neighborhood and they all like to hang around at my office window. I mean, there ARE other kids of cats as well, mostly stripey, and my upstairs neighbors have a fluffy silly goose of a ragdoll who keeps trapping himself outside and then meows at my window until I rescue & return him to his owners. But mostly it’s the fluffy black cats who come to my window to ask for pets.

There is Smokey, a big tom belonging to my neighbors two houses west.

There is Lola, a medium molly belonging to my neighbors two houses east.

There is a little no-name cat that I think is a female (due to her size) that I have no idea where she lives or who she belongs to.

Smokey likes to pretend he is unfriendly & too cool for pets but he is a really a hair baby. Lola is a little skittish but also loves pets, and the no-name cat is SO FRIENDLY OMG. She and Lola will both come right inside onto the windowsill or even climb down onto my desk. Gwen loves it when this happens because Gwen loves any opportunity to pet a kitty. She’ll come running over breathlessly squeaking “hi! hi! hi kitty black cat!” and will pet and pet and pet those cats as long as they will let her. The other day she actually tried to climb out the window after the no-name cat, she loves petting them so much.

All this talk of fluffy black cats may have you thinking “hey Tanie, don’t YOU have a fluffy black cat?” And you would be correct, I DO still have a cat, and if you follow me on instagram you would have seen me posting a lot more pictures of him recently.

Mark Fluffalo is still very shy and very skittish, but he freakin’ LOVES attention, and his love of attention is starting to become stronger than his love of hiding under the furniture all the time. Two times recently he didn’t run under the bed when I walked into the bedroom. When he is under the bed I can reach under there and pet him and he doesn’t hiss or scratch me anymore. The other night he cuddled next to me on the couch for a really long time and was so chill I was even able to trim five of his claws before he bit me (not hard). It’s a kind of miracle. It’s also miraculous how gentle and patient he almost always is with Gwen. He is less scared of her than anyone else so sometimes the only way to pet him is to send Gwen in first because he won’t run away from her. It’s a pretty good trick, and she definitely deserves a lot of the credit for taming this savage beast.